Radiohead: "Nude RE/MIX"

Some time in the late 1990s, when it wasn't quite clear how digital distribution of music would work or that it was an inevitability, I had a vision of bands releasing special versions of their recordings in four-track form. I must have been listening to a lot of dub-- I do remember the Blood & Fire compilation of Scientist's Dub in the Roots Tradition being in heavy rotation-- or perhaps it was a post-Zaireeka buzz, but I kept thinking about how cool it would be if albums were released split into tracks, so that the listener, presumably with a simple mixing device, could reconfigure the recordings in a new way every time he heard them. Drop the drums out for a moment here, just before the chorus; let's see what this section sounds like as an instrumental; maybe some sort of effects loop could be brought in or out to apply some echo or flange. I thought about the old filmmakers' lament, "The projectionist always has final cut." Given this situation, why not release music so listeners could take the idea of "finishing" the piece even further?

Though mp3s weren't in wide use at the time, remixes certainly were, and interactive gaming was also on the rise. The thinking then, which in some ways is being borne out now, was that the age of passive reception of art is on the decline; in the future we'd all be participating in some way. With declining record sales and the ubiquity of sound file distribution, some of these ideas are becoming a reality. Bands are enlisting fans to tinker with their work, by creating music videos (which has the added vantage of costing cash-strapped label promo departments nothing) and, increasingly, by remixing the music. The latest band to join in on this idea is arguably the most creative and forward-thinking major rock band working today, Radiohead. On April 1, this appeared on their Dead Air Space page:

"Remix Nude for Radiohead
To celebrate this week's single release (we still have those in England) Radiohead have broken up the song 'Nude' into pieces for you to remix.

For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing, you can buy the separate components or 'stems' (bass, voice, guitar, strings/FX and drums) and remix your own version of the song. You can do this by adding your own beats and instrumentation or just remixing the original parts. More information is at www.radioheadremix.com/information.

You can buy the stems at www.radioheadremix.com/buy

You can upload your finished mixes at www.radioheadremix.com and be judged and even voted on by 'the public'. You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be sent through too.

Hope you enjoy it!

For those of you who aren't that way inclined, Nude is also available in its entirety on CD and 7 inch (UK release) at the usual retail outlets."

The purchase of the "stems" was widespread enough to land "Nude" in the charts. The uploading ended last week, but voting will continue until June 1. There's no prize on offer, just the satisfaction that comes with knowing that your mix is considered the best. In all, 2,254 remixes were submitted; all are streaming on the Radiohead site. After uploading closed, the band offered a bit of statistical analysis:

You can view the mixes in three ways: most popular (by votes), most recent, and random. Presumably, people generally look at the most voted for, which, since they probably vote based on what they find they find there, has a way of reinforcing the Top 10. Once a mix gets a foothold, it becomes difficult for it to be knocked off. Holy Fuck's mix, which we talked about on Forkcast a few weeks ago, had the top spot for a time but is now several thousand votes behind SPOR'S "NUDE (SPOR REMIX)". Some resentment at the perceived quality of the Holy Fuck mix has brewed; I saw at least two mixes titled something on the order of "The Better Than Holy Fuck Remix".

In any event, surveying the Top 20, it occurs to me that what is being rewarded is competence rather than creativity; the remixes that people seem to be voting for are the ones that are put together well and sound like something that might have wound up on a proper Radiohead remix comp. They're less likely to be completely off-the-wall and risk-taking. SPOR's remix has the effect of accentuating the "Radiohead-ness" of the original; it's a glitchy, broken-beat kind of thing that is also quite lush, and it's very slick. I can understand why people like it.

In a sense, Spor makes "Nude" sound a bit like it would have had it been on Kid A (which was a possibility at one point). "Nude" has been around a while, and it's definitely a highlight of In Rainbows. In his review, Mark Pytlik described the "band's big-hearted resurrection" of the song thusly: "The subject of fervent speculation for more than a decade, its keening melodies and immutable prettiness had left it languishing behind Kid A's front door. Despite seeming ambivalent about the song even after resurrecting it for last year's tour, this album version finds Yorke wrenching as much sweetness out of it as he possibly can, in turn giving us our first indication that he's in generous spirits." (We also touched on the background of the song in the Guide to Radiohead's In Rainbows published on the eve of the album's online release.)

So, back to the "Nude" remix project. I've listened to a lot of these things. In whole or in part certainly at least 150, but probably less than 300. We're talking many, many hours of clicking the "Random" link, going through one by one. Did it drive me crazy? Surprisingly, not really. It was actually a lot of fun, and somehow, the melody and chord changes never completely got old. I will say that after hearing 30 remixes in a row, I would find myself thinking, "How does the song actually go again?" Which is sort of the idea, really. There is no "real song" now; there are only "stems." Radiohead chose to assemble them one way; people here decided to assemble them another-- adding their own bits, and leaving some of Radiohead's bits out.

A few generalizations from what I have heard. Yorke's voice is usually treated as sacrosanct, the untouched center around which the rest of a new treatment revolves. This runs counter to the ideas of the band itself at its most creative; for having such a distinctive singer, Radiohead have never been afraid to muck up his vocals and turn them into another instrument. But most of those I heard build the track around the "Nude" a cappella-- a fairly traditional remix approach. I'm also struck by how many of these are at least pretty good. That's the problem these days-- not that there's so much music and that so much of it is shit, but there's so much fair-to-decent stuff. A very small percentage of these sounded to me truly awful. It says something, perhaps, about the power of today's music-making tools to turn everyone into a decent-enough producer. It made me think of this quote from Markus Popp of Oval said in Sound on Sound magazine:

"Obviously, I hope that my music also introduces other distinctions than just being a mere technical outcome of the available tools. Hopefully it is more than just the predictable result of the implemented features. Of course, I am always keen to invite everybody to define my music in terms of an irrational concept like atmosphere. It's possible to discuss my music in those terms. But it's just a matter of honesty to say 'I'm not a composer. I'm just beta-testing software like everybody else.'"

Sounds about right. Of the mixes in the Top 20 or so, the best are the ones that mess most with genre, turning the track from just a vaguely unspecified IDM/electronic music into something else entirely. A couple of them try to do this by making the song into a dance tune, which is fine and admirable but also tricky since, despite its ethereal, floating character, Yorke's voice still remains oddly grounded in the rock realm. But the "Lost Memories in Trance Mix", which takes the track into a stomping Euro-trance mode complete with heart-quickening breakdowns and smears Yorke's syllables into pure melody, is pretty awesome. Ditto for the "Radio Hawaii Edit", which coats the song in a plastic sheen of exotica touchstones (the likes of which are pretty popular in indie music these days), making it sound faintly ridiculous but also fun.

But I don't want to dwell on the top vote-getters; since they're already up near the top, anyone interested can find them easily enough and they'll probably just continue to be voted for. Rather, I thought it'd be more fun to talk about a dozen remixes I found more or less by chance (two of these were e-mailed to me, the rest I found by browsing, hitting that "Random" link over and over and over).

Anyway, here is A Completely Unscientific and Random Sampling of a Very Small Percentage of Tracks Submitted to This Enormous Project, Some of Which Are Kind of Bad, But I Like Them Anyway:

__ MIKEY DUFOUR: "NUDE (NAKED IN DETROIT MIX)"__
This is appealing in part because it sounds a bit old-fashioned as a remix, like something that might have been done in the late 1980s or early 90s, some sort of Tranquility Bass kind of thing. Chopped-up voices, new drums, and warm, affecting synths transform the tune into something comforting, pretty, and endlessly replayable.

__ CHRIS NOONE: "NUDE (PLATYPUS MIX)"__
When I started this project, I expected to find a lot more of this sort of thing, people that would run the song through a blocky, distorted filter, transforming its subtle unease into something really scary and hard to listen to. I love the little tendrils of noise that the tune leaves streaming around, the way everything is coated in metallic noise. You wonder at first if Yorke's voice even needs to be there, but it's neat to hear him trapped in this world.

__ JUSTINE CHRISTIE: "NUDE (GLEE CLUB REMIX)"__
In which Thom Yorke awoke one morning from uneasy dreams and found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. Nice job here of taking the tune and shoving the whole thing into the k-hole. Weird, psychedelic, kind of disturbing, this is one of my favorites.

__ SON LUX: "NUDE {SON LUX POPULARITY CONTEST REMAKE}"__
OK, these next three remixers are indie-famous to varying degrees; what can I say, I saw their names when they came up randomly and liked what I heard. Maybe they are pros for a reason; none has received a lot of votes. Son Lux is a classically trained composer, and I love what he does here with the piano and reeds as well as the way he fearlessly blends his own voice with Yorke's.

__ OHAD/JUSTIN/CHARLIE (DMST): "NUDE (RE MAKE SAY THINK)"__
Canadian post-rockers transform the song into something that sounds like Canadian post-rock. Although they obviously have a completely intuitive feel for what makes the song work, every one of their own instruments fits perfectly and the voice processing is awesome.

__ AZEDA BOOTH: "NUDE (AZEDA BOOTH REMIX)"__
The music-box textures and overall playfulness reminds me of something on Nobukazu Takemura's Childisc label. A bit of new wave drama, some broken beats, and in the center of it all is the untreated voice. It really seems like it's trying to turn the song into something else, something lighter and more whimsical, but the tune won't quite bend to the producer's whims. A few people voted for this one.